A Primary coming up

So, yesterday our primary ballots arrived for the state election, the most eye-catching element of which is the long list of thirty-six people running for governor. Unfortunately it did not come with the usual voter's pamphlet giving us a brief self-pitch by each candidate, which is usually a good way to sort out the serious candidates from the crazies.

There are two basic ways to deal with managing this unwieldy situation.

Option #1:
—the current governor is doing a pretty good job. Let him carry on doing what he's doing for another four years.

Option #2:
--sort out all the candidates by political party, weed out the weird ones, then check out the online version of the Voter's Pamphlet to learn more about the serious candidates.

Here's my initial sort-out

First off, there are fringe parties, some of which may not actually exist outside the head of the person running: the Stand Up America party, the Propertarianist party, the American Patriot party, the Fifth Republic party, the Cascadia Labour party, the New-Liberty party.

Then there are genuine minor parties who have no hope of winning but want to promote their cause: the Socialist Workers party, the Green party.

Somewhat confusingly, in the non-of the above category we have two "Independent", one "Unaffiliated", and four "No Party". Are these just different ways to say the same thing?

Where things really run off the rails is with the Republican parties (sic). There are fifteen people running as "Republican", three of whom are running as "Trump Republican" and one as "2016 Republican".  I've never seen such chaos on a ballot.

Finally for the Democrats things are nice and simple: five people running, one of which (Gov. Inslee) is all but certain to win.


At any rate this is one election in which 'they're all the same' just isn't a credible response.

--John R.